i saw morans on TV upset that teh mayor wants to bans styrofoam cups. was amazed at their stupid. to see it here on FARK just breaks my heart. i remember HS kids picketing fast food joints in NJ what 20 years ago? that's why it's cardboard and paper wraps these days. THIS IS A GOOD THING. WTF is wrong with you people?

They banned Styrofoam, the trademarked extruded polystyrene product made by the Dow Chemical Company? Were they actually so stupid as to ban the specific brand? I imagine Dow probably has the money to fight that.

NullReferenceException:They banned Styrofoam, the trademarked extruded polystyrene product made by the Dow Chemical Company? Were they actually so stupid as to ban the specific brand? I imagine Dow probably has the money to fight that.

Many manufacturers have now moved away from using "styrofoam" (expanded polystyrene) already. Good riddance.

For instance, the Xbox we just got was packaged in some very ingeniously-folded corrugated box-board.It just goes into the recycling with the other cardboard, no problem.

Expanded polystyrene "flow-pak" (aka plastic peanuts) can't be beat for custom or packaging low-volume product but it can be used over and over again, so it should not wind up in the trash or recycling.

Now, if the manufacturers would just do away with those farkin' "blister paks or "clam shell" packaging that lacerate your fingers and fill up the garbage...

NullReferenceException:They banned Styrofoam, the trademarked extruded polystyrene product made by the Dow Chemical Company? Were they actually so stupid as to ban the specific brand? I imagine Dow probably has the money to fight that.

If they did they are even dumber that you think. real Styrofoam isn't even used for food containers. It's only actually used as building insulation, not food containers at all

BradleyUffner:NullReferenceException: They banned Styrofoam, the trademarked extruded polystyrene product made by the Dow Chemical Company? Were they actually so stupid as to ban the specific brand? I imagine Dow probably has the money to fight that.

If they did they are even dumber that you think. real Styrofoam isn't even used for food containers. It's only actually used as building insulation, not food containers at all

look at it this way, Bloomberg helped ram through the New York AFE act, which didn't exempt police officers from that law. Bloomberg and Cuomo are out of touch politicians, what do you expect?

I looked up and watched a video about recycling Styrofoam. Apparently, only the clean stuff is recycled, meaning the stuff you ate off of is tossed.

It's shredded, then pressed into blocks and the resold to companies which use the stuff to make more commercial packing.

There was a company years ago which developed a liquid that dissolved the polystyrene into a greenish goo. It was supposed to be a way to keep it out of landfills and recycle it, but I've not heard about it being used since.

Now, one way to get rid of it is to mix it into potting soil, basically fluffing the stuff up, then claiming the 'lighter' soil is good for your plants and sell bags of it to home owners. Of course, companies save money on the soil by using less, but you either don't drop the price or you raise it, either way, more profit. Plus you're doing a good thing: recycling Styrofoam. (Actually, just spreading it around more.)

Now comes the part where you need to think. Remove the stuff from circulation and ban it. You'll need to replace it. The most logical is with wood based paper products. We can do a lot of things with paper these days. Next to aluminum, paper is one of the greatest recycled items in volume and usability.

So, when the demand rises, along with the cost of pulp, we're going to hack down even more trees for paper products. (Those old growth trees dredged up from lake bottoms, where they've steeped for 75 to 100 or more years, are worth thousands of dollars. They're often sliced thin and sold as veneers -- at roughly $800 a sheet depending on the type of wood.)

So, will this improve the chances to go back to growing hemp, AKA Pot or a version of it, which is highly versatile, grows quickly, can easily replace wood pulp paper more cheaply and with better quality? That opens up a whole new bag of political worms.

We make boards out of sawdust. Could we make the same from hemp?

It's also about 100% recyclable. Kind of like corn. We use EVERYTHING from a corn stalk and it was still cheap to grow -- until Ethanol Fuel makers decided it needed to be used for gas. Then the cost soared.

So, we have several possible replacements for Styrofoam: wood pulp, paper and hemp. You can even toss in corn, especially the unneeded stalks.

Now, this will require more land to grow the stuff. Developers have known for years they can buy farm land cheaply, avoid certain taxes, build on it and pass the taxes on to the buyers. So, farm land is in demand by developers. Also by mega-corporations who are wiping out the small, independent farmer, whose pesky efforts keep food prices from being manipulated too much.

Creating polystyrene requires much less land. Plus, some of its compounds come from oil based chemicals, which benefits the oil industry. Remember, our major financial institutions are heavily invested in oil, so it's not to their benefit to promote things than can drop the price a bit.

This stuff doesn't go away and we produce it by the millions of tons. You can't incinerate it without producing toxic gasses. We have whole industries which have grown dependent on it's insulating qualities and cheapness. It's even been used as an additive in cement -- to create a lighter, better insulated version.

Currently, in various ways, we pay quite a bit to dispose of the stuff. You can find chunks of it all over the globe, in places where humans haven't set foot in generations. It might be cheap to use in fast food and the packing industries, but it's grown very costly for us to contend with the waste.

Personally, I figure hemp is the best bet as a replacement. Besides, one Robber Barron, decades back, had it banned when it threatened to cut into his paper making empire and politicians tend to stay bought.

BTW. I was a kid when the stuff first appeared and I recall real paper cups, paper egg cartons and treated paper (waxed) milk cartons.

Some years back, I spotted paper commercial moving pallets, developed because the old wooden ones were starting to rise in price.

So, we did without Styrofoam ages ago and we can do without it now.

Besides, I once worked in a stock room and opening up cases full of those Styrofoam peanuts just created a heck of a mess we had to clean up later and blew all over the parking lot. From the lot, the Styrofoam went into the storm sewers, then right out into the local river. From there, they eventually drifted out to sea.

In theory, they could ban everything. I mean everything. It would be, according to all relevant supreme court decisions, perfectly constitutional to ban the manufacture, sale or possession of any and all physical objects.

mizchief:KrispyKritter: i saw morans on TV upset that teh mayor wants to bans styrofoam cups. was amazed at their stupid. to see it here on FARK just breaks my heart. i remember HS kids picketing fast food joints in NJ what 20 years ago? that's why it's cardboard and paper wraps these days. THIS IS A GOOD THING. WTF is wrong with you people?

We live in a free country you shiat head. If you don't want people to use Styrofoam then don't buy products that come packaged in them. If you want others to stop using it, then try to convince them not to using facts and reason. If people believe that the benefits out weigh the consequences then so be it.

If Bloomberg wants to be a mini-dictator that's fine with me, i'll simply choose not to live in or spend my tourist dollars in his kingdom. If enough people agree with me, he'll get elected out of office, if not then so be it.

oh Goober surely you can do better than that. you're a redneck Georgia arsehole that never leaves the county; what take places in NYC affects you not. but I give you +1 points for being so ignorant (or is it stupid?) that you can't realize mankind has a responsibility to our own selves to take steps to keep the very planet we depend on for life free from destructive pollutions. you're as dumb as they cum. please don't reproduce.

KrispyKritter:mizchief: KrispyKritter: i saw morans on TV upset that teh mayor wants to bans styrofoam cups. was amazed at their stupid. to see it here on FARK just breaks my heart. i remember HS kids picketing fast food joints in NJ what 20 years ago? that's why it's cardboard and paper wraps these days. THIS IS A GOOD THING. WTF is wrong with you people?

We live in a free country you shiat head. If you don't want people to use Styrofoam then don't buy products that come packaged in them. If you want others to stop using it, then try to convince them not to using facts and reason. If people believe that the benefits out weigh the consequences then so be it.

If Bloomberg wants to be a mini-dictator that's fine with me, i'll simply choose not to live in or spend my tourist dollars in his kingdom. If enough people agree with me, he'll get elected out of office, if not then so be it.

oh Goober surely you can do better than that. you're a redneck Georgia arsehole that never leaves the county; what take places in NYC affects you not. but I give you +1 points for being so ignorant (or is it stupid?) that you can't realize mankind has a responsibility to our own selves to take steps to keep the very planet we depend on for life free from destructive pollutions. you're as dumb as they cum. please don't reproduce.

NullReferenceException:They banned Styrofoam, the trademarked extruded polystyrene product made by the Dow Chemical Company? Were they actually so stupid as to ban the specific brand? I imagine Dow probably has the money to fight that.

You should really try to RTFA before chiming in with questions, it would save us all a metric shiat-ton of time...FTFA: In the case of Styrofoam, ... Styrofoam is a brand name, it's really polystyrene that you're banning.

I think the soda thing is the most annoying. This isn't something that affects OTHER people's health like smoking, and it doesn't cause pollution issues like Styrofoam. And to top it off, the farker does it at movie theaters? Yeah, we share a big soda at the movie because they cost $4 a pop for a small. Fark that noise... So glad I don't live there, I really don't see the draw to that place.